Center for Security Studies
The Circassian Question
25 Aug 2014
By Uwe Halbach for SWP
The Sochi Winter Olympics is just one of the reasons behind renewed Circassian
activism in Russia and beyond. As Uwe Hallbach sees it, the resurgence is also the
latest manifestation of a ‘long-distance nationalism’ that may, in time, challenge the Putin
administration’s grip on power.
This article was originally published by the Stifung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) on
August 2014.
Circassians all over the world marked the 150th anniversary of the expulsion of their
ancestors from their North Caucasian homeland. The links between this unresolved legacy
of Russian colonial history and President Putin’s prestigious Winter Olympics in Sochi have
reinvigorated Circassian activism. While different objectives and methods coexist within
the movement, the demand for acknowledgement of the wrongs inflicted on their forebears
is shared by both the remaining Circassian population in the North Caucasus and Russia
(about 700,000) and the worldwide diaspora (several million). What challenges does this
present for Russia?
Sochi 2014 confronted the world with the hitherto largely neglected “Circassian question”.
Although the Olympic city and its North Caucasian neighborhood had been the Circassians’
historical homeland until 1864, the host nation neglected to include them in the planning
of the Games. This contrasts, for example, with the Canadian approach to its indigenous
population for the previous Games in Vancouver. When President Vladimir Putin presented
Sochi’s bid in 2007, his speech to the IOC mentioned numerous nations and cultures
that had shaped the Caucasian Black Sea coast since classical antiquity, but not the
Circassians. The first time he spoke of the original inhabitants of the area was shortly
before the Games opened, to complain that forces hostile to Russia were exploiting the
“Circassian card”. By contrast, the parliaments of the republics of Kabardino Balkaria (1992)
and Adygea (1996) used the term “genocide” in resolutions on historic violence against the
Circassians. What they were referring to was the deliberate expulsion of what was then the
largest North Caucasian nationality, following its 1864 defeat in the Russian Circassian War.
Emergence of a National Movement
The choice of Sochi reignited a Circassian movement that had emerged in the early 1990s
but subsequently lost momentum. The most significant development in the early post-Soviet
period occurred between August 1992 and September 1993, when the conflict between
Georgia and Abkhazia erupted into open warfare. This brought forth a solidarity movement,
the Confederation of the Peoples of the Caucasus which mobilised large parts of the North
Caucasus especially the residual Circassian population, to fight against Georgian forces
in Abkhazia, and played no small ole in their defeat. Hundreds of Circassian volunteers
joined the fighting. The remaining Circassian population in the North Caucasus lives
largely in the republics of Adygea (capital: Maykop), Karachay Cherkessia (Cherkessk) and
Kabardino Balkaria (Nalchik). Kabardino Balkaria has the highest proportion of Circassians
(Kabardians) in its population, with 55 percent. During the post-Soviet phase Circassians
in all three republics competed with representatives of other nationalities for local political
and economic resources, for example with Turkic Karachays and Balkars and with ethnic
Russians. The 1999 presidential elections in Karachay Cherkessia represented an ethno
political watershed, followed by weeks of demonstrations against the disputed victory of
the Karachay candidate. Yet another spur for a Circassian national movement came in
2005, when the Kremlin announced plans to revoke Adygea’s autonomy and merge it
into Krasnodar Krai. The central demands of the activists are for Circassians in the North
Caucasus diaspora to be permitted to return, and for the historical Circassian settlement
areas to be amalgamated into a single autonomous territorial unit.
The Diaspora
The mobilisation that began in 2007 reached well beyond the North Caucasus, into the
worldwide diaspora in which 90 percent of Circassians live today. The largest community
is in Turkey, as the successor to the Ottoman Empire to which most of the Circassian
deportees were sent. In Turkish, “Çerkes” is often used to describe all groups with
Caucasian roots in modern Turkey, amounting to a figure of several million. As far as
Circassians in the stricter sense are concerned, the Ottoman authorities resettled the
deportees of 1864 among Armenians and other minorities in western and central Anatolia
and in Ottoman possessions in the Balkans and the Middle East. Although figures for
groups of Caucasian origin in modern Turkey are based on estimates, it is known that
there are more people of North Caucasian, especially Circassian and Abkhazi an, origin
in today’s Turkey than in their original home regions. Although several hundred Circassian
villages can still be found in central and western Anatolia as a whole homogenous diaspora
settlements of single Caucasian nationalities in generally dis solved in the course of
urbanisation. In the post- Soviet period the large Caucasian diaspora came to play a role
in Ankara’s relations with Russia and the South Caucasus. When the Abkhazia conflict
flared up, organisations in Turkey called for support and solidarity for the struggle of their
Abkhaz “brothers” and the volunteer forces from the North Caucasus. Later Chechnya
became a point of reference for Caucasian solidarity groups. The Chechen wars fell in a
period of warming relations between Russia and Turkey that saw the two Black Sea powers
which fought more than a dozen wars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries growing
closer in the fields of business, energy and tourism. This placed narrow limits on Ankara’s
solidarity with diaspora groups agitating against Russia. The same also applies to relations
with Georgia, which also blossomed in the spheres of commerce and tourism. Circassian
diaspora groups are also of some relevance in Middle Eastern states and societies. Up
to 100,000 North Caucasians are estimated to live in Jordan, largely Circassians, but
also Chechens and others. Here the Circassian minority is especially strongly rooted
in government, business and the military and close to the royal family. The Circassian
community in Syria, which also numbers about 100,000, is currently endangered by the
civil war. Circassians in Egypt occupy a special historical position. They arrived there not
through deportation from Russia in the nineteenth century, but as Mamluks, a military caste
that played a leading role in Egypt from the fourteenth century. The Circassian community in
Israel comprises only about 3,500 members, but stands out for its homogenous settlements
and preservation of the native tongue. The younger generation of the Western diaspora (for
example in the United States and Germany), on the other hand, generally no longer speaks
Circassian. Islam has not to date been central to national identity, though young Circassians
in the North Caucasus, like their peers in other Muslim nationalities there, have come under
the influence of radical Islamist networks. In Kabardino Balkaria, for example, the group
Yarmouk has emerged as a jihadist formation. It is the memory of the 1864 deportations
that is central to Circassian identity.
Return to the Homeland?
In the early 1990s Russian Caucasian republics with residual Circassian populations
established ties to the diaspora and supported returnee programmes. But aside from a
few thousand returnees the contact remained largely restricted to tourism by diaspora
Circassians in the historic homeland. Nor was a broader returnee movement to be
expected, given that Circassian immigrants in many places have been relatively well
integrated for several generations. The current exception is Syria, where the escalating
civil war represents an acute threat to ethnic and confessional minorities. Circassian
organisations worldwide are now calling upon Russia, which in 1999 gave refuge to
Circassian families from the war zone in Kosovo, to accept Syria n Circassian “returnees”.
While several hundred have already arrived in Maykop and Nalchik, Moscow is generally
wary of returnee movements of non-Russian nationalities in the North Caucasus. The
Russian leadership has no interest in immigration increasing the Caucasian population
in the region, after most of the ethnic Russians left during the course of the past twenty
years. The Ukraine crisis has heightened contradictions in Russian immigration policy. After
annexing the Crimea, the Kremlin offered all citizens of the former Soviet Union Russian
citizenship as long as they were able to speak Russian. The language restriction naturally
excludes diaspora Circassians. At the same time, Russian speakers from eastern Ukraine
are currently being resettled in the North Caucasus, despite concerns about the security
situation there.
International Networking
The first International Circassian Congress was held in Nalchik in May 1991. It set up the
International Circassian Association (ICA), whose elected members represent Circassian
communities in the three north-west Caucasian republics and the diaspora. They comprise
numerous organisations from Turkey, Russia and other countries, including Circassian
councils (Adige khase) from the three North Caucasian republics, from Krasnodar Krai,
from Moscow and from Abkhazia, charities from Turkey, the Middle East, California and
New Jersey, and a Tscherkessische Kulturverein (Circassian Cultural Association) from
Germany. The ICA sees its main task as coordinating cultural relations between Circassian
communities across the world. It has, however, not pursued that goal with great vigour. Its
offices are staffed largely with members of the bureaucratic elites of the three Caucasian
republics, who were concerned to avoid confrontation with Moscow and practically failed
to respond to Russian repression against activists who raised the “Circassian question”
in connection with Sochi 2014. Such activists increasingly organise in small autonomous
groups outside the ICA, which also missed the transition to the internet age and for a long
time did not even have its own website.
Shifting Relations with Abkhazia and Georgia
In 1992 Circassians joined other North Caucasian nationalities to fight with the Abkhaz, their
ethnic kin in the South Caucasus, against Georgia. But allegiances shifted after the Russo
Georgian Five Day War of 2008. Under President Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia pursued
an anti -Russian North Caucasus policy, one of whose central elements was to stir up the
Circassian question in connection with Sochi 2014. In May 2011 the Georgian parliament
passed a resolution recognizing the “genocide of the Russian Empire against the Circassian
people”. Tbilisi was thus able to drive a wedge between Abkhazians and Circassians,
who had both once suffered so called ethnic cleansing under Russian colonialism. Its
great dependency on Russia in its conflict with Georgia meant that Abkhazia was, to the
frustration of its former ally, unable to join these recognition moves. The new Georgian
government in 2012 adopted a more pragmatic line towards Russia and thus also North
Caucasus and refrained from boycotting the Olympic Games in Sochi. But its underlying
stance on the Circassian question remained unchanged. In the aftermath of the 2014
Crimea crisis, some political forces in Ukraine are now calling for Russian colonial policy
towards the Circassians to be officially condemned as “genocide”.
Outlook
Today there are few veterans from the time of the Abkhazia war left among the ranks of
Circassian activists. A new generation aged between 18 and 28 communicates via the
internet and is networked with Circassian communities across the world. They provide an
example of the phenomenon for which the American political scientist Benedict Anderson
coined the term “long distance nationalism”, which has already been identified in the
Armenian and other diaspora communities. Although the Circassian case has not produced
a coherent, militant or overtly returnee driven national movement liable to burden the
problem laden North Caucasus with yet more potentially violent conflict, the revival of
interest in their ethnic roots among young people of Circassian origin does represent a
challenge for Russia. Moscow finds itself con fronted with an unresolved chapter of its
colonial history during a phase where President Putin is cultivating a patriotism that leaves
little space for self- critical historical reflection.
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